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New Delhi: Former World number 1 Kidambi Srikanth and World champion PV Sindhu will spearhead the 20-member strong Indian challenge in the Thomas and Uber Cup scheduled to be played in Denmark next month.

To build our present it is imperative to have a rich sense of history, which means hindsight with objectivity, without bias, without any inclination to stigmatise it. But what is happening is simply the reverse. A concerted effort has been unleashed to dim the glory of the heroic deeds and sacrifices made by our people coming from various streams of our society.

Healthcare has always been a concern in our country, but lately the people are more sensitised towards it. This is because of the spread of COVID which is taking toll on the lives of many people from all socio economic strata. In addition the repeated lockdowns have affected the day to day life and economy. Crores of people have lost their jobs/livelihood. As a result they are unable to meet their healthcare requirements. People have started questioning the healthcare system in our country. It appears that it is in this background the Prime Minister announced National Digital Health Mission in his independence day address to the nation on August 15 this year.

The GDP growth in the first quarter (April-June) of 2020 over the first quarter of the previous year has been minus 24 per cent according to preliminary official estimates. But most knowledgeable people believe that even this is an underestimate of the actual contraction brought about by the lockdown. In fact, a former chief statistician of India, Pronab Sen, believes that the actual contraction would have been about 32 per cent. Others put the figure even higher.

A pall of gloom is hanging about India’s economic future ever since the GDP estimates about the first quarter of the current fiscal were laid bare a week back. There is a virtual competition among forecasters about the extent of estimated contraction of the Indian economy. Some banks say is it a 7 per cent, some say no over 10 per cent and yet others even better. Does it really warrant such downbeat mood?

The meeting between the Foreign Ministers of India and China, S. Jaishankar and Wang Yi, in Moscow on Thursday proved as infructuous as the previous one between defence Ministers Rajnath Singh and Wei Fenghe on September 4. China is in no mood to vacate the Indian territories it has newly occupied and restore the status quo ante May 5. India also does not want to resort to force to drive out the Chinese because it will mean a local war that may well spin out of control and become a full-fledged India-China war.

The five point formula agreed at the two hour talks between the two foreign ministers of India and China on Thursday night in Moscow amidst heightening tensions in Ladakh border, has come as a ray of hope in working on some arrangement to avert any bloody confrontation between the opposing troops of the two neighbours in the mountainous region. The most positive aspect is that the mentioned points of action are very practical and they can be implemented in practice provided the two governments move with trust and, the lack of which is at the root of the aggravation of the tensions on the border.

The 28-year-old Rhea Chakraborty, actress-girlfriend of the late Sushant Singh Rajput, has been arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau on charges of drugs consumption, for allegedly buying cannabis for Rajput. Cannabis, or marijuana, also known as weed in common parlance, is a mild psychoactive drug widely used for medicinal purposes, with a gigantic informal market of recreational use. While cannabis is legal in many countries, its status in India is mixed. The production and sale of cannabis resin and flowers banned under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, a law which in itself needs considerable reworking. However, NDPS Act allows for the use of leaves and seeds for medicinal purposes, for horticulture and under traditional alternative medicine like Ayurveda, as part of the Hindu religious offering bhang. The arrest of Rhea Chakraborty for simply procuring cannabis for private consumption, is therefore, not just a gross overreaction by the state but stinks of a political framing.

Corporations cashing in on Covid-19 are set to make tens of billions more in profits this year while millions of people fall into poverty worldwide, Oxfam has revealed.

On September 1, 2020, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Arun Mishra finally sought to set at rest the controversy surrounding payment of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues by telecom companies.